Ageing in place

I used to attend rock concerts. Now I attend --- concerts. Often these are symphony performances (the wonderful Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the 'TSO') and sometimes they are a bit more rock and roll. But only a bit. Husband and I looked back on our non-classical-music ticket purchases of the past couple of years and we have been to hear Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, and  Steve Martin (with the Steep Canyon Rangers). All figures who have moved from superstar to super-icon, really. We felt comfortable at these venues; we were with our peeps. We weren't old.

On Friday we changed it up a little and attended an event at the International Festival of Authors (#IFOA), an interview with Colm Toibin (please envision a ' over each 'i') and Marilynne Robinson, two amazing novelists, a Catholic and a Calvinist (the former lapsed, he says). Before heading out the door I checked with 11-year-old daughter about my outfit, because for the first time in days- possibly weeks- I wore something other than jeans.

"How does this look?" I asked her.

"Where are you going?" she enquired.

I told her it was to listen to a couple of authors.

"How old will the other people be there?"

Puzzled, I told her they'd be the same age as me.

"Well, then it's okay. You look fine."

I thanked her but wanted to know why the age of the other attendees mattered. Unfortunately, she explained it quite cogently.

"If they're old, they might be colour-blind, or have some other vision problems. So then it doesn't matter that your dress is dark grey and your boots are black."

That's me put in my place, just where I belong.

'Quaint Canada'

As I've noted before (perhaps even droned on about), I listen to BBC radio most of the time. Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra, Radio 3. Every day I give mute thanks for our LogiTech internet radios, one upstairs, one down. On weekends I sometimes switch to NPR, especially for Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion.

But I wake up to CBC One, the Metro Morning show hosted by Matt Galloway, and when my eyes open and my vision focuses, I check Twitter for local Toronto information. Is the subway running normally or should I warn my high-school kids to expect delays? Will there be a blizzard? Has the world ended? Today I learned that Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani Nobel Prize-winning girls' education rights activist, would appear at the high school around the corner from us as part of a program called 'Strong Girls'. Afterward, Malala would receive honorary Canadian citizenship from the prime minister at a swanky hotel downtown. My 11-year-old daughter is reading about Malala in her grade 6 class and I emailed the teacher to share my excitement about this very local event.

I also listen to CBC radio in the car, although in the usual course of things, we don't often use our car. Today was an exception; I drove elder son to a cross-country meet across town to save him an awkward trip on public transit. It is one of my non-work days so we brought the dog and arrived early; the weather was crisp but bright, the trees full of colour, and there was enough time for me to have a bit of a jog around the lake while son supervised dog. On my breathless return, they both greeted me, dog with yips and muddy paws, and son with the news that there had been a shooting outside the Parliament building in Ottawa. 'What?' I asked. 'When?'

He consulted his phone. Twenty-four minutes earlier, apparently. Like everyone else here, we're in disbelief. In the car on the way home I listened to CBC. I've had it on all day long (bar 15 minutes for The Archers). The announcers were flibbertigibbet, almost incoherent at times, during the first couple of hours. The US was offering sympathy and assistance. 'This isn't what we're used to,' said one broadcaster to another. 'We're used to it happening in their country. We're the ones who offer sympathy to them.'

It is indeed a tragedy. A young reservist enjoying the honour of guarding the Cenotaph on Parliament Hill has died of the gunshot wound inflicted by the perpetrator. He seems to have been the single father of a young son. It could have been even worse, apparently, in terms of numbers of victims, but for the quick action of the Sergeant-at-Arms inside the Parliament building, because he shot dead the (a?) gunman who marched in with a large firearm.

We do need sympathy. And more information.

On Twitter I read a comment from the leader of a German delegation of Christian Social Democrats who happen to be visiting Ottawa today:

"We are all concerned and surprised that in quaint Canada, this kind of thing could happen,”  he wrote. “Everybody expects Canada to be remote from all the troubles of the world, peaceful and quiet and now we have this situation.”

This evening I listened to a CBC broadcaster interviewing someone in the government. She asked him whether he thought this event would change the way Canada operates. 'I notice that when the guards today, the RCMP, wanted people to move away, they said "Please move back. Please move." I don't think you'd hear that in Washington, DC. Do you think that will change here?' she asked her respondent.

'Oh, don't even suggest it,' he said in alarm. 'We're Canadians!'

Malala's visit and her honorary citizenship ceremony: both cancelled. For today, anyway.

The Centennial Flame, also called the Eternal Flame, in front of Parliament. I took this picture when I attended a conference in Ottawa last November.

Always Look on the Dark Side of Life

Canadians are famous for being nice, and it's a pretty well-deserved reputation in my experience. I've run into a few rude Canadians of course, but infrequently enough that it surprises me. (I've noted two situational exceptions: 1) being on a bicycle-- something about two wheels brings out the worst in the Canadian, or perhaps Torontonian, temper; and 2) being on the soccer pitch. I have not been able to play much lately while I recover from a sprained knee, but when I could, gee willikers, some of the women on the teams we encountered could be harsh, as I'm sure those women would say --did say-- about my own team.)

However, those exceptions aside, courtesy does stand out for me as a predominant attribute in my new country. I have a theory that the Canadian propensity for niceness and tolerance is linked to another Canadian trait I notice, which is a Scots-like tendency to dourness, evident in a national commitment to vicarious suffering. Recently my son's friend told me how much she is enjoying one of her high-school classes called 'Crimes Against Humanity,' which  explores the subject of genocide in detail and depth. This class is not the whim of an individual teacher, but a registered, approved course on the Ontario high school curriculum. It is offered by the Toronto District School Board and several other boards in the province. For comparative purposes, I tried to find a similar one on the website of my own alma mater, the Los Angeles Unified School District. Nada.

I thought of this course when I listened last week to a radio talk show from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), called 'The Current'. The program covers timely topics each weekday morning at 8:30 am, but only timely topics that are also distressing and/or depressing. Recent episodes include the shutdown of a centre for disabled people in a remote northern town, mistreatment of elephants somewhere, freight train drivers falling asleep at the wheel, and the overprescription of opioids for chronic pain. At the show's core is the imperative to unfurl suffering and wave it in the face of listeners engaged in drinking their morning coffee or commuting to work. I try, I really do, to join in the rending of clothes and the daubing of ashes, but most mornings somewhere around 8:35 I give up and switch to BBC  (thank god for the internet). I feel sure that the Canadians, being a lot nicer than me, carry on listening and empathizing while they finish the last of their Tim Hortons (no apostrophe) double-double.

I cannot even bear to drink Tim Hortons no-apostrophe coffee. Sometimes I really worry that I may be unfit to become Canadian.